The wheels of change: Why Brokenshire needs to up the house building ante

Many have suggested this is another change in ‘Housing Minister’ and technically I suppose they are right, however there’s also the case that the ‘real’ Housing Minister has always worked under the MHCLG Secretary, and in that sense Dominic Raab remains in that role (although admittedly he’s not been there that long).

We do have the added benefit of course, since Housing was recently added to the Communities & Local Government Ministry title, that we (as an industry) have had a place at the Cabinet table in recent months – something Raab does not hold – and now we will see Brokenshire taking up that position.

In a sense, the changes don’t look ideal because, as mentioned, Javid was a committed ‘house builder’ in the role, plus he did have a strong grasp of the marketplace, its requirements and the like, plus (under his watch) there’s no doubting there’s been a much wider focus on righting the wrongs of the housing market. Undersupply of new homes being one of them. Now, there’s nothing to suggest of course that Brokenshire won’t be like his predecessor, indeed he might well push the agenda forward more forcefully, but like any Minister with a new brief there will be a bedding-in period, and perhaps some teething problems.

There’s also the rather interesting recent statistics on house building to pore over before we heap too much praise on Javid, who is clearly ambitious and one might expect will be fighting it out for the top job when Theresa May leaves. The figures – from the MHCLG itself – shows that the Government’s pledge to build 1 million new homes by 2020 currently looks unlikely to be fulfilled.

The figures – 386,160 new homes started between 2015 and the end of 2017, with the number of new builds in the process of being built increasing by 7,235 – mean that if this level of building was maintained, the Government would be 83,890 shy of its 1m total.

Now, we are a number of years away from the Government having to make that target stick – and one suspects that it will give itself right up to the 31st December 2020 in order to do so – plus they might well (perhaps quite justifiably) argue that house building is increasing at a more rapid pace to a point where that shortfall could be made up. However, we should also remember that there is some serious political weight behind these ambitions – Theresa May called it her ‘personal mission’ to get to these figures, plus the new ones of 300k new homes being built every year by the middle of the next decade, so it won’t surprise the Government to learn there is a great deal of focus on ensuing these targets are met.

Which makes the position of the new MHCLG Minister an interesting one, not just because there will be pressure on him to quicken the pace, but with Brexit on the horizon as well, there’s no real way of knowing just how changes to the broader economy will impact on the housing market in general, and house builders in particular. This is not a part of the economy that has many thousands of suppliers all currently building new homes; on the contrary, the Government is almost utterly reliant on the big companies moving this forward at some pace.

Which, of course, opens up all manner of debates in terms of building on the green belt, loosening planning permission laws, support for Councils to do their own building, not forgetting the demand-side issues of supporting first-time buyers, helping those further up the ladder to move, maintaining the Help to Buy Scheme, and encouraging lenders to lend at higher LTVs in order to grow the absolutely crucial low-deposit prospective purchasers who are not lucky enough to benefit from family support of any kind.

Plus, the fact that at the next election, the Conservative Party’s pledge to help more first-timers and thus shore up its support amongst younger voters, could be the defining factor in whether it can secure another Parliamentary term in office. There is, without doubt, a lot riding on this and while Javid might feel he’s gone on to one of the big ‘Head of State’ jobs, the pressure will be on Brokenshire to not just continue in the same vein but to seriously up the house building ante.